Comic Book Reviews for October 1, 2008

Share.

Batman's war with the Joker dominates the releases this week.

By Rich, Dan, Jesse, Bryan, & Crown

Welcome to the latest IGN Comics review index. If you've been here before, you know the drill. If you haven't, here's how it works. We grade on a 100-point scale. Numerically this is represented as a 10 point system with 0.1 increments. These scores also translate to particular labels which you'll find below that Final Score. Simple enough? You can find a breakdown of our scores by clicking here.

We'll often provide multiple reviews on bigger releases and events. For these, keep in mind that our "Final Score" is simply a reflection of the lead (or first) reviewer. Each writer's review will be clearly labeled, and so will their score, but we don't average those numbers for a final rating.

Any time you feel like commenting on our reviews, you may. Head to the bottom of the index for that. You can also find our message boards by clicking here.

One last thing. Dying to make your voice heard and write your own reviews? You can do that! Click here to access our reader reviews. You can check out what your fellow IGNites are thinking and post your own thoughts.

Enjoy the latest reviews!

DC Comics

Batman #680Written by Grant Morrison | Art by Tony Daniel

Review Excerpt: "Batman RIP and the entirety of Grant Morrison's run on Batman have both been promising to lead up to a Danse Macabre for Bruce Wayne, the fateful moment where the greatest forces ever aligned against him would all join together to bring about his inevitable doom. And that's precisely what Morrison has delivered with this penultimate chapter of RIP – a gruesomely violent, horrific and very disturbing dance of death that sees nearly every major thread and player introduced thus far in Morrison's run unite to do the cha-cha on Batman's grave." - Dan

Review Excerpt: "From the moment DC first announced plans for a miniseries that would coincide with the 2008 election, seeing heroes of the DCU align themselves with fictional presidential candidates, you could hear a collective gasp from every fan worried about the logic behind assigning political ideologies to universally loved characters." - Dan

Review Excerpt: "House of Mystery kicked off with a bang this summer, becoming one of my favorite new series in the process. Of course, the real test of any fledgling series is how well it holds up beyond the first arc. When looking at the best and brightest among Vertigo - Sandman, Fables, Preacher - the initial arcs end up paling in comparison to the rest of the series. Unfortunately, I don't get the impression House is quite ready to make a leap of that magnitude. It's still a good read, but it begins to betray a lack of direction moving into arc two." - Jesse

Review Excerpt: "Though I had fallen out of the fold for a while, I was willingly dragged back into reading Jonah Hex last month. A guest stint by artist J.H. Williams III was enough to catch my eye. Though it proved to be a typical Hex comic with a shiner coat of paint, such a thing still amounts to a lot in this day and age. I chose to stick around for another month, and I feel quite rewarded for doing so." - Jesse